


sandcastle (the gibbering wave takes)

by Byacolate



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Drabble, Established Relationship, F/M, Love Letters, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-23
Updated: 2015-11-23
Packaged: 2018-05-03 00:26:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5269625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Byacolate/pseuds/Byacolate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alistair dreams, sometimes, of the great wide After.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sandcastle (the gibbering wave takes)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [therunya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/therunya/gifts).



> therunya asked for a bright and happy golden retirement future fic. This is almost that. :D

Alistair dreams, sometimes, of the great wide After.

 

Figuratively speaking, of course. Alistair’s actual dreams are mostly Darkspawn, splashes of red, and Blight, Blight, Blight. His waking mind tends to wander when he’s stowed away, fugitive from his own order, and in the months to come.

 

They are daydreams of an idyllic future that may come to pass if Alistair does not. He doesn’t expect it to - not really. But then, he never expects the good things in his life; every time he thinks he’s reached his capacity for good fortune, he’s surprised again and again.  

 

There’s blood and dirt caked under his nails, and he hasn’t slept in what feels like years, but he finds solace in the privacy of his mind.

 

 _Antiva, I think_ , goes the letter he writes in his head. It’s too risky to put to paper, but perhaps if he thinks it very, very hard, she may get an inkling… wherever she is. _We’ll go to Antiva after all this is done._

 

The Inquisitor finds him, and he takes up residence at Skyhold. For now. Safety in numbers, and behind high stone walls. Hawke spends time with Varric now, in the keep proper and in the tavern, which gives Alistair even more time to himself. He’s been on his own for too long, it seems, because when he goes down to join the people, it’s just… too loud. He thought he’d craved the sound of purpose again, of cheer, and he _does_.

 

Sort of.

 

The quiet of his own making is a burden, one he must endure, but in the middle of the Herald’s Rest he finds himself desperate for companionable silence. Not so much the tense and weary hush he shares with Hawke when they duck away from a Warden wandered too close, or camped out in the middle of nowhere, too open to rouse the beacon of conversation between them.

 

It’s the quiet of _her_ presence he seeks - the comfort of a space that needs no word or flagrant gesture.

 

He goes to Leliana instead.

 

“Antiva would be lovely,” she says beneath her cowl. “You could write to her. Or I, for you.” There’s an air of mystery around her now that she relies on, where before she smothered it with joviality. Alistair knows the feeling, in a sense. Still, when she gets too serious, he smiles in a way he hasn’t smiled in ages, and teases her about her nugs.

 

 _Somewhere by the sea,_ it goes - not for any love of the surf, but because he can think of nothing farther from fortress living, nor from Orlais.

 

Nor from the Blight-damned Ferelden wilds, he thinks twice as hard when he spots Morrigan. The old habit of trepidation is hard to kick, but Alistair surprises himself by feeling nostalgia even more strongly.

 

She has no barbed words for him now - only appraisal that melts into something he can’t possibly call soft because it’s _Morrigan_. But he might, were the expression on anyone else.

 

 _We’ll have a garden,_ the letter goes, the scent of freshly turned soil and growing green things striking his heart, jolting his mind with the unbidden memory of the Brecilian Forest, and blood scrubbed free in the stream, and Alistair’s face pressed to the warm junction between her shoulder and her neck.

 

“ _Do_ Wardens retire?” Morrigan asks him loftily, sunlight turning her eyes to brilliant gold.

 

They do not. But, Alistair insists, a man can dream.

 

“Well, don’t let me stop you,” she says, in that tone of voice that warns him something scathing is to follow. She surprises him for the tenth time that hour to say instead, “I suppose your dreaming must be twice as fanciful, for she cannot. ‘Tis the one imbalance in your partnership where _you_ possess the advantage, after all.”

 

 _Maybe we’d even have a child,_ it goes, cautiously. He meets Kieran.

 

Or, Kieran meets him.

 

Alistair says nothing that would give him away, but the boy is so much Morrigan’s that he can’t help feeling Kieran knows him inside and out after only a passing conversation.

 

He wonders what she’d see of him in Kieran, if she met him. Not very much, Alistair thinks; Kieran is clever, so clever, and keen, and he heeds Morrigan without question. Only those eyes give him away. Alistair wonders, too, what she’d see in a child made more out of love, out of desire, out of trust, out of -

 

_Maker, I hope she’d have your eyes. And your kind heart. Your infallibility; your compassion._

 

Kieran is Morrigan’s son, but the griffon plate on his chest feels like a kindness. Alistair knows better than to think that it's meant for him.

 

Kieran is studious, and despite his soft and childlike tone, he is so _serious_.

 

_I hope she’d be trouble, just a little. Scrape her knees. Bring filthy strays home. Make a mess in the bath, and roll around in the garden the moment she’s out. She’d give me grief, but she’d be docile as a lamb for you._

 

They storm Adamant Fortress, and it’s going better than Alistair had expected until the whole thing crumbles, predictably, right under his feet. His stomach swoops as he falls and falls, and wonders in those rapid heartbeats if Leliana will write the letter for him after all.

 

When he isn’t dead, Alistair allows himself a flicker of hope, and it doesn’t dwindle - not even when the Nightmare calls out to him. The demon’s cutting words strike only the steel of Alistair’s resolve. He’s far too weary to muster shame for truths that led him and kept him with her.

 

_We’ll grow old and grey. We’ll stand on the beach with our toes in the sand. To my dying day, I’ll kiss your fingers and your freckles and the corner of your smile. We’ll be happy. We’ll be -_

 

And when they stumble past the demon’s corpse and face the titanic spider in their path, Alistair quietly, quietly burns the letter to ash.

 

Alistair dreams, sometimes, of the great wide After. He has the time for it. He has all the time in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Joanna Newsom's "Sawdust & Diamonds": _And darling, we will be fine; but what was yours and mine appears to me a sandcastle that the gibbering wave takes. But if it’s all just the same, then will you say my name; say my name in the morning, so that I know when the wave breaks._
> 
> Inquire about fic requests [here!](http://wardencommando.tumblr.com/ask)  
> If you are so inclined, feel free to follow [my Tumblr](http://wardencommando.tumblr.com/).


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